Hands up if you use Firefox. Have used it? Know about it? Heard of it? 'Sites up and down the World Wide Web today will be celebrating five years of Firefox. When I sat down to write this I worried about having to list the history of its features and landmark events and the news of the past five years. Other sites will be comprehensively doing that, there is nothing I can add to that list that Google can't surmise. Instead I will be telling you what Google does not know, my story of Firefox and what Firefox has meant to all of us.

My bet is that any of these teachers has more than enough money in their pockets to buy a network-capable "Unix" machine, nevermind the institution they work for.

Even if he didn't any computer running windows can run cygwin for free which provides a complete if slow unix environment. Furthermore if he had enough disk space he could run a full Ubuntu either under windows or besides windows.

Finally he could run a VM.

What the teachers lack is knowledge, and unfortunately most of their students will end up in the same situation.